We Know How To Hate — Opus Dei Society, harsh noise, and cassette underground history
We Know How To Hate – the Opus Dei Society Story is a compact book by Frans de Waard, published by Korm Plastics, documenting the history of the harsh noise cassette label Opus Dei Society through label notes, interviews, reprinted texts, and underground scene material. The label released twenty-three cassettes; this book traces that catalogue and the wider network of people and practices around it.
The book operates as a scene document rather than a simple discography. Moving through each release, it builds a picture of the people, labels, and relationships that surrounded the project. Interviews with Vidna Obmana, Don van Dijk, David Padbury, Eriek van Havere, Stef Windelinx, and Ameury Perez are included, while Peter Zincken contributes autobiographical notes. The catalogue was small, but the network it opens onto is dense — radical sound, small-edition production, and the specific logic of underground circulation in that period.
What distinguishes the publication is the range of material gathered in a compact format. Reprinted pieces include interviews with Con-Dom and THU20, as well as texts on Christian Nijs and his label Disbuse Transmissions, and on the early work of Peter Zincken as Odal. The book is useful not only as label history but as a concentrated archive of power electronics and cassette-era underground culture — the kind of record that rarely gets written at this level of specificity.
Readers with an interest in Music Books & Sound Culture, DIY music press history, or industrial and noise documentation will find the scope here well matched to the subject: local, embedded, and precise.
23 cassettes, interviews, reprints, and scene memory
Author: Frans de Waard
Publisher: Korm Plastics
Format: Softcover
Pages: 88
Dimensions: 17 × 24 cm
Subjects: Harsh noise, power electronics, cassette culture, underground music history
Interviews: Vidna Obmana, Don van Dijk, David Padbury, Eriek van Havere, Stef Windelinx, Ameury Perez, Peter Zincken (autobiographical notes), Con-Dom, THU20
Frans de Waard and Opus Dei Society
Frans de Waard has been active in experimental sound culture since 1984 and is best known through projects such as Kapotte Muziek, along with a long parallel involvement in labels, publishing, reviewing, and underground documentation. His work moves between sound practice and print culture, which positions him well to write this kind of focused scene history.
Opus Dei Society formed part of that wider activity. Although its catalogue was small, the label gathered a harsh and highly specific group of artists and remains a meaningful point of reference within cassette culture, power electronics, and noise history. This book captures that scale precisely: specific, local, and embedded in its moment.
